Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Justice for Agency Workers?

Good to read in the Times On-line today that exploited agency workers may finally be given some protection under an EU directive and no longer treated as 3rd class citizens.

Details are a little unclear but I suspect that “The Times” is scaremongering as usual over the suggestion that agency workers will be getting “full rights” after only 6 weeks. It takes a year for permanent staff to be given protection from unfair dismissal so I can’t see agency staff being given greater rights than permanent.

I hope that it is intended to put an end to a two tier “terms and conditions” workforce and that agency staff should be on “broadly similar” terms as permanent staff. I cannot for the life of me work out why anyone apart from agency bosses would be opposed to this? We gave part time and long term directly employed temps the same rights years ago. The world did not end. The harsh facts of the matter are that many agency workers are treated like dirt by their employers and something simply needs to be done about it.

Also, we see the CBI are up to their usual dirty tricks by claiming that up to “250,000” workers will lose their jobs if this directive is implemented! Yeah, just like the millions of jobs they forecast will be lost if there was a minimum wage.

It is, to say the least, “disappointing” that the Labour government is apparently trying to delay the changes. I can understand why they feel that they have to keep up this “Fairness not Favours” balancing act on employment issues. Labour wants (and needs) the support of “middle England” as well as the unions. However, this is 100% a fundamental fairness and social justice issue. Many agency jobs are not on real “temporary” assignments. They are just cheap and easy to get rid of. Millions of vulnerable British workers having to put up with low wages, no employment tenure and no sickness or pension benefits. The exchequer is being robbed out of billions in lost PAYE taxation and national insurance payments from bogus so-called self employment. In Tower Hamlets Council most of the housing caretakers are agency staff on minimum wage, no sick pay, no overtime rates, no employment protection and of course, no pensions. How on earth can anyone survive on £5.52 per hour in inner London?

To be fair to the government they say they are committed to bringing in rights for agency workers (its also I think an outstanding commitment from the Warwick agreement?) but say they “are worried” that the current proposals are badly written and could harm employment. I think these worries are overdone and exaggerated.

Maybe this is a vision thing for Gordon? It is also electorally clear “red water” that we ought to exploit for all its worth. The Tories are of course opposed to any such change.

Millions of agency workers could see tangible real benefits from a Labour government – pounds in their pocket, money if they become ill and money towards a pension for when they grow old. Genuine, real short term employment needs and flexibility will not suffer and no doubt there will still remain a large agency sector.

However what we can get rid of is 19th century Dickensian employment practices that have no place in a 21st century that should be led by principals of fairness and social justice (and BTW – a century of Labour Party governments with clear majorities?)

2 comments:

Falco said...

"real benefits from a Labour government – pounds in their pocket"

Leaving aside the amusing idea that a Labour government that has ramped up the tax take would be behind a plan to put "pounds in their pocket" this will not work in that way. If you impose extra costs on the agencies then they have to recover them from somewhere. As a result wages will be depressed.

John Gray said...

Hi Falco
Actually, I am very proud of this Labour government’s record of putting pounds in poor people’s pockets. Could do better of course... but the fact of the matter (I think that you cannot argue against this?) is that there are millions and millions of pensioners and low paid workers who have more income, more real money to spend each week than under the Tories.

If you were not brought up in a home where money was “tight” you just won’t appreciate how important this sort of thing is to ordinary people.

The details about what is actually going to happen is rather vague however, I think that the aim is to encourage employers to employ people on permanent contracts rather via agencies since they will not be able to pay these people less. This in itself would be Brill. The agencies would not be able to recover the costs except out of their own profit margins. So wages will not be affected? There should be a natural cost rather than a benefit for an employer from employing agency staff rather than employing staff directly. Probably, in many case agencies will still be used to employ short term staff. As long as people are paid the permanent rate and other working terms then so what?